The Best American Poetry 2013

by David Lehman

  After summer rains,

  marble thumb snails and beetles

  blot the window screens

  with pearl and drone. Gardenias swell,

  breathing is aquatic and travel

  a long drawl from bed to world.

  During drought,

  the heat becomes a devil

  girl with oven-red lips

  who wants your brains puddled

  in a brass-capped mason jar,

  who wants the silver stripped

  from your tongue, the evening pulse

  between your legs, yes, she wants

  everything from you.

  from Terrain.org

  DAVID TRINIDAD

  from Peyton Place: A Haiku Soap Opera, Season Two, 1965–1966

  139

  Long before there was

  Court TV, there was Rodney

  Harrington’s hearing.

  140

  When Stella perjures

  herself on the stand, Rod cries

  “That’s a lie!”—nine times.

  141

  Connie gets her test

  results. Just what this messed-up

  soap needs: more children.

  142

  I’m not sure lying

  motionless in bed should be

  considered acting.

  143

  Would you want Charles

  Dickens read to you if you

  were in a coma?

  144

  Betty alludes to

  Orwell when her name is paged:

  “Big Brother calling.”

  145

  Allison’s hand moved!

  Looks like Great Expectations

  is doing the trick.

  146

  Rossi sees movement

  in her eye; direction, no.

  Kinda like this show.

  147

  Snooping into Miss

  Choate’s files: Betty Anderson,

  candy-striper sleuth.

  148

  Oh goody, Stella’s

  lies are beginning to catch

  up with her. Squirm, bitch!

  149

  Turns out Miss Choate has

  a heart, as well as an old

  spaniel named Brandy.

  150

  The way Rodney strokes

  his comatose girlfriend makes

  me a bit nervous.

  151

  So many bad lines

  and actors to poke fun at,

  so few syllables.

  152

  For a D.A., you

  sure are slow, Fowler. Russ has

  the hots for your wife!

  153

  Allison wakes to

  find her mother’s been replaced

  by Lola Albright.

  154

  Amnesia might be

  a blessing—best to forget

  she’s part of this script.

  155

  Remind me never

  to whiz to dinner in an

  electric wheelchair.

  156

  Norm’s wet underarms—

  proof he’s yet to discover

  Arrid Extra Dry.

  157

  Grandfather Peyton

  has furnished the mansion with

  all sorts of Fox props.

  158

  Don’t worry, Ryan,

  in ten years you’ll be the star

  of a Kubrick film.

  This is the continuing story of Peyton Place . . .

  from Carbon Copy Magazine

  JEAN VALENTINE

  1945

  The winter trees offer no shade no shelter.

  They offer wood to the family of wood.

  He comes in at the kitchen door, waving like a pistol

  a living branch in his hand, he shouts

  “Man your battle stations!”

  Our mother turns to the kitchen curtains.

  He shakes the branch, a house-size Great Dipper

  points North over the yard:

  Can it help? How about

  the old dog, thumping her tail. Whose dog is she?

  How about the old furnace, breathing.

  Breathing the

  world: a flier, a diver,

  kitchen curtains, veterans, God, listen kindness,

  we’re in this thing like leaves.

  from Plume

  PAUL VIOLI

  Now I’ll Never Be Able to Finish That Poem to Bob

  Now I’ll never be able to finish that poem to Bob

  that takes off of a poem by Bob

  where he’s looking out the Print Center window

  at a man in a chicken suit

  handing out flyers on Houston Street.

  Mine has Plato saying man is a featherless biped

  and Aristophanes slamming a plucked chicken

  on the table and declaring the definition apt but flawed

  and it ends with Francis Bacon

  dedicated empiricist

  experimenting with frozen food

  stopping his carriage in a snowstorm

  and hopping out to stuff a chicken with snow

  It worked but Bacon got pneumonia and died

  Without making a pun on bringing home the bacon

  the poem closes on Bob saving Bacon’s life

  with chicken soup. It would have been a long poem

  and it would have made a lot of sense

  and shown why I believe Bob Hershon is a wise man.

  from Hanging Loose

  DAVID WAGONER

  Casting Aspersions

  He told me I was casting aspersions on him,

  and because he was sensitive and literary,

  I knew he must be telling me I was sprinkling

  unholy water on him, was sailing a phony

  barb-hooked lure among his lily pads,

  was gathering a lousy bunch

  of actors to make a bad movie about him,

  was pouring hot metal into molds

  to anchor some satirical bobble-heads

  that looked like him, was publishing

  his rotten horoscope and crooked fortune

  and knotting them, stitching them, looping them,

  catching them up—but I wasn’t, and I said so

  right to his face, and he began to cast

  his own aspersions on the character

  he thought I was playing in his private drama.

  The Georgia Review and Harper’s

  STACEY WAITE

  The Kind of Man I Am at the DMV

  “Mommy, that man is a girl,” says the little boy

  pointing his finger, like a narrow spotlight,

  targeting the center of my back, his kid-hand

  learning to assert what he sees, his kid-hand

  learning the failure of gender’s tidy little

  story about itself. I try not to look at him

  because, yes that man is a girl. I, man, am a girl.

  I am the kind of man who is a girl and because

  the kind of man I am is patient with children

  I try not to hear the meanness in his voice,

  his boy voice that sounds like a girl voice

  because his boy voice is young and pitched high

  like the tent in his pants will be years later

  because he will grow to be the kind of man

  who is a man, or so his mother thinks.

  His mother snatches his finger from the air,

  of course he’s not, she says, pulling him

  back to his seat, what number does it say we are?

  she says to her boy, bringing his attention

  to numbers, to counting and its solid sense.

  But he has earrings, the boy complains

  now sounding desperate like he’s been

  the boy who cries wolf, like he’s been

  the hub of disbelief before, but this time

  he knows he is oh so right
. The kind

  of man I am is a girl, the kind of man

  I am is push-ups on the basement

  floor, is chest bound tight against himself,

  is thick gripping hands to the wheel

  when the kind of man I am drives away

  from the boy who will become a boy

  except for now while he’s still a girl voice,

  a girl face, a hairless arm, a powerless hand.

  That boy is a girl that man who is a girl

  thinks to himself, as he pulls out of the lot,

  his girl eyes shining in the Midwest sun.

  from Columbia Poetry Review

  RICHARD WILBUR

  Sugar Maples, January

  What years of weather did to branch and bough

  No canopy of shadow covers now,

  And these great trunks, when the wind’s rough and bleak,

  Though little shaken, can be heard to creak.

  It is not time, as yet, for rising sap

  And hammered spiles. There’s nothing there to tap.

  For now, the long blue shadows of these trees

  Stretch out upon the snow, and are at ease.

  from The New Yorker

  ANGELA VERONICA WONG AND AMY LAWLESS

  It Can Feel Amazing to Be Targeted by a Narcissist

  Let’s just see if it fits, and your voice blurred, your hand brushing away

  mine, me laughing because seriously who says that? I flashed out of my body

  picturing you saying this to other girls, and laughed again. Those are words

  that can only be said late at night in an outer borough, while Manhattan

  glitters in rows of mocking unison from over the bridge. Those are the

  moments when I think how did I get here followed shortly by okay whatever,

  like now, sitting in the park, watching couples strolling hand-in-hand. Once I

  made you cupcakes. In the morning before I left, I arranged them on a plate

  and left them on your kitchen table. Don’t worry, you weren’t the first one I’ve

  done that for. I’ll just think of the whole thing as a stretching exercise.

  from The Common

  WENDY XU

  Where the Hero Speaks to Others

  Dear mailbox. I have abandoned the task. There is no more glory

  to resurrect, spoils of the marriage to pick over. She finds me burdensome and has moved out into the guest house.

  I don’t remember building a guest house.

  Many nights I have stumbled out into the unwilling streets and fallen

  to my knees before you. O, mailbox. Your throat is swollen

  and refuses to sing for me. You no longer bring me news of a timeshare abroad

  which I might consider. You draw up from your long, black stomach papers

  I will not sign. O, lamplight.

  You are equally no friend. Beside you I deliver a monologue

  correcting previous scholars about the usefulness of tulips. O, useless tulip.

  There is so much I want to say to you when grinning, you mock me

  for watching you from the window. I feel ashamed

  for wanting you. For sitting quietly in a chair especially

  to miss her. O, musty library flooded with sun. To rub her name

  from the faces of your books.

  from MAKE and Verse Daily

  KEVIN YOUNG

  Wintering

  I am no longer ashamed

  how for weeks, after, I wanted

  to be dead—not to die,

  mind you, or do

  myself in—but to be there

  already, walking amongst

  all those I’d lost, to join

  the throng singing,

  if that’s what there is—

  or the nothing, the gnawing—

  So be it. I wished

  to be warm—& worn—

  like the quilt my grandmother

  must have made, one side

  a patchwork of color—

  blues, green like the underside

  of a leaf—the other

  an old pattern of the dolls

  of the world, never cut out

  but sewn whole—if the world

  were Scotsmen & sailors

  in traditional uniforms.

  Mourning, I’ve learned, is just

  a moment, many,

  grief the long betrothal

  beyond. Grief what

  we wed, ringing us—

  heirloom brought

  from my father’s hot house

  —the quilt heavy tonight

  at the foot of my marriage bed,

  its weight months of needling

  & thread. Each straightish,

  pale, uneven stitch

  like the white hairs I earned

  all that hollowed year—pull one

  & ten more will come,

  wearing white, to its funeral—

  each a mourner, a winter,

  gathering ash at my temple.

  from The American Scholar

  MATTHEW ZAPRUDER

  Albert Einstein

  only a few people

  really try to understand

  relativity like my father

  who for decades kept

  the same gray book

  next to his bed

  with diagrams

  of arrows connecting

  clocks and towers

  in the morning

  he’d cook eggs

  and holding

  a small red saucepan

  tell us his tired children

  a radio on a train

  passing at light speed

  could theoretically

  play tomorrow’s songs

  now he is gone

  yes it’s confusing

  I have placed

  my plastic plant

  in front of the window

  its eternal leaves

  sip false peace

  my worldly nature

  comforts me

  I wish we had

  a radio sunlight

  powers so without

  wasting precious

  electrons we could listen

  to news concerning

  Africa’s southern coast

  where people are trying

  with giant colored

  sails to harness

  the cool summer wind

  with its special name

  I always forget

  last night I read a book

  which said he was born

  an old determinist

  and clearly it was all

  beautiful guesses

  and I watched you knowing

  where you travel

  when you sleep

  I will never know

  from The Believer

  CONTRIBUTORS’ NOTES AND COMMENTS

  KIM ADDONIZIO was born in Washington, DC, and now lives in Oakland, California, where she teaches private poetry workshops in her home and online. She is the author, most recently, of Lucifer at the Starlite and Ordinary Genius: A Guide for the Poet Within, both from W. W. Norton. Her verse novel, Jimmy & Rita, was recently reissued by Stephen F. Austin State University Press. Addonizio’s work has been recognized with a Guggenheim Fellowship, two NEA Fellowships, and other honors. She has two novels from Simon & Schuster and is currently at work on a second collection of stories and a play. She is a member of the Nonstop Beautiful Ladies, a word/music project. She plays blues harmonica and is learning the banjo. Visit her online at www.kimaddonizio.com.

  Of “Divine,” Addonizio writes: “My brother once commented, ‘Now I get how writers work. You’re magpies.’ Which we both understood to mean: Writers scavenge from wherever they can. In the case of ‘Divine,’ I scavenged from Dante, Plato, the Bible, fairy tales, old vampire movies, whoever said ‘Only trouble is interesting’ is the first rule of fiction, early Christian flagellants, a trip to Australia where I
saw bats in a botanical garden, and my then-present emotional state. Which was, essentially: There’s no place like hell for the holidays. When I googled ‘magpies’ for this statement, I discovered they possess a few more writerly traits: They are clever and often despised, little poètes maudits. The Chinese considered them messengers of joy, but the Scots thought they carried a drop of Satan’s blood under their tongues. They are fond of bright objects. And then this: When confronted with their image in a mirror, they recognize themselves.”

  SHERMAN ALEXIE was born in 1966 and grew up on the Spokane Indian Reservation. His first collection of stories, The Lone Ranger and Tonto Fistfight in Heaven (1993), won a PEN/Hemingway Award. In collaboration with Chris Eyre, a Cheyenne/Arapaho Indian filmmaker, Alexie adapted a story from that book, “This Is What It Means to Say Phoenix, Arizona,” into the screenplay for the movie Smoke Signals. His most recent books are the poetry collection Face, from Hanging Loose Press, and War Dances, stories and poems from Grove Press. Blasphemy, a collection of new and selected stories, appeared in 2012 from Grove Press. He is lucky enough to be a full-time writer and lives with his family in Seattle.

  Of “Pachyderm,” Alexie writes: “Lying in a university town hotel, unable to sleep, I watched a National Geographic documentary about elephants. There was a scene of a mother elephant coming upon a dead elephant’s bones. The mother elephant carefully touched the bones with her trunk. She seemed to be mourning the loss of another elephant. It was devastating. Then, a few days later, I watched a CNN story about an Iraq War veteran who’d lost both of his legs to an improvised explosive device. He was confident in his ability to rehab successfully, but I also detected an undercurrent of anger. So, while I was working on a novel the mourning elephant and wounded soldier merged in my mind. And that’s where ‘Pachyderm’ had its origins.”

  NATHAN ANDERSON was born in Spokane, Washington, in 1973. He is an assistant professor at Marietta College in Marietta, Ohio, where he teaches composition, literature, and creative writing. His poems have appeared in Iron Horse Literary Review, Sewanee Theological Review, and New Ohio Review.

  Of “Stupid Sandwich,” Anderson writes: “This poem started when a few lines (a shadowy echo of what would become the speaker’s voice) surfaced while I was working on another project. As the speaker’s voice developed and the context began to take shape, I became interested in how this particular speaker responds and, more broadly, how all of us respond, when the daily pressures of a life become seemingly unmanageable.”